There is nothing children enjoy more than pretending! Role playing games are such valuable tools for teaching languages. Planning a virtual trip requires some planning. You have to make sure the content is suitable for the level you teach.

Introduction of a country or cultural activity:

1. Passport: You can create a simple template that your students will have to fill out with basic information such as name, age, and country where they were born. They can draw a small picture about themselves.

2. Ticket: The ticket will have their seat and arrival country.

3. Sitting on an airplane: You may need to adapt this based on your space and the amount of time you have available to set up. I usually like making single lines and numbering the chairs from 1 to 20, depending on the number of students you have. Each student gets assigned a number. You can have two students pretend being the flight attendance to greet everyone when getting on the plane. This might take up to 5 minutes. You can also pretend that you have a pilot who will welcome everyone and let them know where they are heading to. For example, “Buenos días, Bienvenidos al vuelo de la clase de español. Vamos a Colombia.”

4. Google Earth: This requires some advance planning. You might want to choose the pictures of the places you would like to visit. I found a post written by The Teacher’s Prep with great information on using Google Earth: Create a Virtual Trip Using Google Earth

5. Choose a few short videos about the country you plan to visit.6. Postcard: Have the children make a postcard that they can pretend to send to a family member. The postcard can have information about what they learned during the virtual trip.Steps 4 and 5 might require a few class sessions to complete while the children do the cultural exploration. This also depends on how many times you see your students and the kind of program in which you teach. Some teachers prefer to do the cultural part in English , while others keep the target language basic and at the level of their students. I have a “Travel Set Activity” in my TpT store that I have used successfully with my students. Everything is ready to set up, and it even includes printable stamps that students can add to their passport every time they visit a new country. Click on the picture to learn all about it!

Nothing like the sounds of traditional music, and the stories behind it! I love when I am able to find a song that belongs to and represents one of the Spanish speaking cultures – and use it in my classes. Bringing traditional songs to the classroom is a way to teach our students that the Spanish speaking world in not just one culture, but that it’s made up of many cultures. It’s a way to show that there is all kinds of cultural diversity out there. However, using traditional songs in elementary school is not an easy task. Finding traditional songs that suit the levels we teach can be challenging because sometimes they have too much vocabulary and complicated structures and sometimes not enough repetition. So I know I have to work on simplifying them for my students to comprehend. Sometimes I just choose parts of a song to focus on, which usually happens to be the chorus.

This is how I recommend teaching traditional song at the elementary level:

Identify the vocabulary or structures you want to focus on.

Provide background about where the song is from. Use a map to locate the country where the song is from – and with today’s technology you are even able to prepare your students with virtual field trips using Google Earth. You can even make a play passport for your students to keep track of when they learn a song from certain country.

Make it comprehensible. Create a slide show with images from the song. Taking a screenshot works great! Use the Movie Talk strategy to talk about what the children see in the picture. If there is no video available you can create your own slide show with pictures that are representative of the song. (See sample below.)

This may vary a little from teacher to teacher, but I let my students listen to the whole song without stopping the first time.

Focus on creating meaning. I also like using TPR and create gestures that go along with the song. When songs are too complex for my level, I focus on the chorus which most of the time provides a lot of repetition.

This is also optional, but if you happen to have some of the instruments that are used in the songs, pass them around and have your students experience them.

If you have a library in your classroom, print the Powerpoints, laminate the pages, bind them together and add them to your library.

Sing and enjoy!

La vicuñita

This is one of my favorite songs. I used it with my kindergarten students this year, and their reaction was beautiful! The first time they heard it they were in love with it, but some of them expressed sadness. I love how they were able to feel the song without the need to understand every single word.

I created a Powerpoint to talk about the song before teaching it to the class. I took screenshots of the video and added more images to use while taking about the pictures. Believe it or not, there is a lot to talk about in these pictures. Below you may find a sample of a script that I used while talking about the pictures. Expect some of the children to come up with more details. I used this song with kindergarten close to the end of the school year. I noticed that sometimes my students participated by using English, but I let it go to avoid frustration and would do the following instead. For example, one of my students said “There is a sun!” Then I pointed to pictures saying “Hay un sol,” then pointed at the side pictures on the slide, saying “Hay una luna.” Then I went back to the slide and said “¿Hay un sol o una luna?” In this way, I was giving them some vocabulary prompts and avoided some frustration at this level, allowing it to flow naturally.

Here is an example of the conversation I had with my students using the slideshow I created to make the song comprehensible.

Recycle structures from the previous slides. You will see that by this time the children will start recalling vocabulary on their own. You can add “¡Hay otra persona! Hay un niño y una niña.” You can go to the class and count how many niños and niñas are in the class. Again, recycle structures from previous slides, for example “La persona es amiga de vicuñita.”

Here are the lyrics of the song. I also created a Powerpoint with the lyrics, that I also use when not using the video to sing along. I chose just a few structures that I really wanted my students to get from this song. I might focus on more “chunks of language” with grades that have had more exposure to Spanish. These are highlighted in the lyrics below:

Del cerro yo vengo con mi vicuñita,

Del cerro yo vengo con mi vicuñita.

Cantando y bailando para mi cholita,

Cantando y bailando para mi cholita.

Yo soy vicuñita y vengo de la Puna,

Yo soy vicuñita y vengo de la Puna.

Vengo escapando de los cazadores,

Vengo escapando de los cazadores.

Mala ya la hora de ser vicuñita,

mala ya la hora de ser vicuñita.

Todos me persiguen por mi lana fina,

todos me persiguen por mi lana fina.

Last, but not least, we create gestures together to go along with our singing of the song.

This version is also great to show your students the instruments that are used to play this song:

It definitely takes time to make sure the song is understandable for the children and even more at the beginning levels, but the reward is worth it. My students kept asking for this song, and a few of them shared with me in the end of their year evaluation / reflections that La vicuñita was their favorite song. I shared a post on Instagram where you can hear just how much they were feeling the song.

Have fun singing!

You might also like these resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers

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ABOUT ME

¡Hola! I am Carolina, a Colombian elementary Spanish teacher based in Austin, Texas. Fun for Spanish Teachers is the result of my passion for teaching Spanish to children and my desire to inspire collaboration and creativity in a vibrant teaching and learning community. It’s the perfect stop if you are looking for songs, games, teaching tips, stories, and fun for your classes.